This is What Dreams Should Always Be
by M. Pond
Summary: "Once upon a time he had been a man who would stay up late on Christmas Eve to create footprints from the fireplace to the tree so his daughter would think that Santa had been...That man was long dead." It's been three years but Michael still dreams of his family every night.


**A/N: **My first fic for this fandom and it doesn't even contain Nikita, my favourite character. I mean technically she's kind of in it if you squint, tilt your head and maybe hold your laptop upside down, but really this is all about Michael. I always assumed that, if I ever wrote Nikita fic, it'd be Michael/Nikita because those two own my heart and soul. But then I read the poem below and I was inspired. I've always been intrigued by Michael's (very vague) past, how much his life was changed in one moment and how he managed to come back from such a devastating tragedy. So this is a little angsty insight into Michael circa 2004.

* * *

_Voices, loved and idealized,_

_of those who have died, or of those_

_lost for us like the dead._

_Sometimes they speak to us in dreams;_

_sometimes deep in thought the mind hears them._

_And with their sound for a moment return_

_sounds from our life's first poetry—_

_like music at night, distant, fading away._

- Voices by C. P. Cavafy

* * *

When Michael was twelve, his father got so drunk at a local dive bar that he failed to notice the eighteen-wheeler coming his way as he jumped a red light at the intersection. The news of his father's death should have been surprising but his failing attempts at sobriety had been a constant presence throughout Michael's childhood. So, when he spent Saturday afternoon watching his father be lowered into the ground rather than hitting a home run for his middle school baseball team, he'd felt little sadness for the man that had always chosen a bottle of whiskey over his own son. What he had felt that day was an overwhelming desire to avoid ever ending up like his old man, a weak, unemployed drunk who had failed his family time and time again.

And he really thought he'd managed it. He had been married to his high school sweetheart, father to the most amazing little girl, and a well-respected Naval Intelligence Officer on the brink of the big break of his career.

Then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone.

It never made sense to him the way life could change in a split second. If he had been asked back then, back before his entire life was destroyed, where he saw himself in the future, he would have talked about still being married to Elizabeth with a whole gaggle of kids and a gorgeous home in Hawaii. He saw a future filled with happiness and laughter and all the good things that came from having a family and success.

But the reality was wildly different to what he had dreamed of. There was no beach, no family and no happiness. He spent his days in an underground bunker, turning teenagers into weapons and barely surviving day to day. The only thing stopping him from going back to the apartment that he was supposed to call home – he hadn't had a home since a blast threw him through the air and destroyed everyone he loved – and putting his gun in his mouth was his desperation to destroy the man who betrayed him so easily and murdered his family. Once he had lived for his family and their happiness, and now he lived to see another man's blood on his hands. He didn't want to know what that said about him.

His life passed in an emotionless blur. He was steadily climbing the ranks in Division but he felt no joy at the promotions. The closest he came to caring was as he crafted the recruits into the skilled assassins they were destined to become, but even then he forced himself to keep his distance. He had made a mistake early on and warmed to a young recruit, Joseph, who reminded him of himself at that age. But then he'd taken a bullet in the brain on his very first mission. Michael had drunk himself into a stupor that night. Ever since then, he had stayed determinedly detached from the recruits. He trained them and watched over them, guiding them as they entered into the world of espionage, but never anything more than that. Percy viewed them as expendable weapons and they were willing to die for their country. No good could come from caring about those who were destined to die. The pain of losing his family was something he carried with him every single day and there was no room in his heart for any more loss. So he stood back and watched the recruits transform from screwed up criminals to elegant killers, the ever observant and quiet man in the background.

Sometimes he overheard comments from the recruits about his disinclination to show even a semblance of amusement, and he wondered what they'd say if they knew that he used to smile just hearing his wife and daughter's voices. That once upon a time he had been a man who would stay up late on Christmas Eve to create footprints from the fireplace to the tree so his daughter would think that Santa had been. That he'd carried Liz's engagement ring around in his pocket for two whole weeks before he finally got the nerve to kneel down in the snow and ask her to marry him. That he'd read Hayley Goldilocks and the Three Bears every night for a month and a half, always doing the silliest of voices, just because it made her giggle.

That man was long dead.

The only time he felt anything remotely close to happiness nowadays was when he slept. When he slept, he dreamt of a life that was no longer his, a family that no longer existed, and a person he no longer was. In his dreams, he had his family again and was the person he used to be, a person he was actually proud to be. The dreams varied but Liz and Hayley were always there and that was all he needed.

Sometimes he dreamt of days long past and other times of adventures that never came to be.

On the night he came home from running his first mission, a hit on the ambassador from Kazakhstan, he dreamt of the day when Hayley was born. He stood by Liz's bed, shaking with all the nerves of a soon-to-be parent and withholding the urge to wince as she clenched his hand so tightly he thought bones might be breaking. There was the nurse at the foot of the bed cheering her on to give just one more push and suddenly a rush of activity before one second that seemed to last an eternity. Michael was sure he had never been as nervous as he was in that moment as the delivery room fell quiet. Then a cry broke out, shattering the silence and announcing the arrival of his daughter.

She was six pounds two ounces with ten fingers and ten toes and in wonderful health. And as he held her and looked down at her tiny rosebud mouth and rosy cheeks, he understood for the very first time what it was to love another person unconditionally. He rocked her back forth gently to soothe her cries, utterly enchanted with this gorgeous creature who was somehow fifty percent him, and swore that he would never let anything bad happen to her. It was a promise that had been made by millions of fathers before him and would be made by millions after but he meant it with every fibre of his being.

When he woke up from that dream, it felt like his heart broke all over again at the overwhelming rush of love he felt for a little girl that no longer existed, and he ended up slouched over the toilet, vomiting violently as his mind haunted him with the moment he had failed his family in the worst way possible.

Other times his dreams were darker and those were the ones that haunted him for days or even weeks afterwards.

Liz and him lay on a beach that seemed as if it was a mere creation of his mind rather than any place he had actually been. The ocean was clear and crystal blue while the white sandy beaches were completely deserted save for the two of them. They were underneath a large striped umbrella but Liz still wore a pair of red, heart-shaped sunglasses, ones that he remembered Hayley excitedly picking out when they had spotted them in a tourist shop in Florida. He watched her as she lay there silently, her chest rising and falling, terrified to look away in case, when he looked back, her chest was still.

"Why didn't you save us?"

Her voice was just as soft and warm as he remembered but her words made his heart clench.

"I couldn't. It was too late."

"You could have saved us, Michael. Why didn't you?"

His body seemed to move of its own accord and he found himself kneeling next to her in the sand. He reached for her hand but she moved out of his grasp and stood.

"You let us die."

"No! It wasn't my fault. It was Kasim! He betrayed me."

She removed her sunglasses and instead of the loving, trusting way she had always looked at him when she was alive, her eyes were icy and full of hatred.

"You killed us," she spat, taking a step backwards from him. "You killed your family."

The desperation to reach out and explain suffocated him but no sound came when he opened his mouth to speak and his feet was suddenly lodged in the sand. Liz seemingly floated backwards down the beach, her accusations wounding Michael where he stood, and however hard he tried to run after her or to apologise, he remained beside the umbrella, only able to silently watch as his wife disappeared.

He commandeered one of the training rooms the day after that dream and beat punching bag after punching bag until their seams split and his knuckles bled. But still his wife's words went round and round in his mind, taunting him and reminding him of what his own actions had caused.

He hated himself.

Even when his dreams were that awful though, raising up the very darkest thoughts from his subconscious, he couldn't let them go. Some nights he barely slept, tossing and turning as his mind haunted him with fights that he had had with Liz or times he had reprimanded Hayley and been on the receiving end of her temper. But he shrugged off Amanda's concerns about his exhaustion and waved away Birkhoff's suggestion that he go to medical for some sleeping pills. Because no matter how terrible his dreams, they were the only chance he had to see his family and to hear their voices again.

His favourite dreams were the most painful, the ones of things that never got to be.

He knocked lightly on a non-descript hotel door and waited for a familiar voice to call for him to come in. As the door swung open, it revealed a sight that took his breath away. Hayley was stood by the window, the light framing her face, and he didn't think he had ever seen his daughter look more beautiful. Her hair was swept up in some complex style that probably took more time than he spent on his hair in any given week, and she was wearing a wedding dress that cost more than he wanted to think about.

"Will I do?" she asked, spinning in a small circle for her dad's approval.

"You look beautiful, honey. Now what do you say we get in the car and go home? Your old bedroom is still waiting for you complete with Alfred the bear."

"Dad," she laughed, swatting him on the arm. "I'm getting married in thirty minutes. It's time for you to accept this."

"Are you sure? There's still time to make a break for it."

"You like Andrew!"

"I do like Andrew. But I am never going to be okay with a man taking you away from me."

"Taking me away from you? Did we suddenly travel back to the 1950s and no one told me? Dad, Andrew and I have been living together for two years, and we've been living two thousand miles away. Nothing is going to change for you."

"But you'll be a married woman," Michael sighed, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "It feels like just yesterday I was holding you in the hospital, this tiny little thing looking up at me with these big blue eyes like I was the most important person in the world."

"You will always be one of the most important people in my life. Nothing can change that."

"One of," he gasped, clutching a hand to his chest. "You wound me."

"Well I'd have said most important but I feel like favouring my dad over my mom, siblings and husband just isn't done." She laughed brightly as he pulled her into a hug and kissed her cheek. "I love you, dad."

The room faded away and suddenly Michael was standing in a large ballroom, swaying gently with Liz in his arms. Her head was resting on his shoulder and the familiar scent of her perfume wafted over him as they danced.

"They look happy, don't they?" she asked, looking over at Hayley and Andrew who were dancing together and seemingly unaware of everyone around them.

"They do. We did good, didn't we?" he smiled.

"We did." She smiled back at him, that huge smile that shone out of her and made him feel like the most special man in the world. "I love you."

"I love you too," he said before bending down ever so slightly and kissing her softly.

"I don't mean to interrupt," came a voice from over his shoulder and he turned to see Hayley stood behind him with Andrew trailing behind her, "but I think it's time for the father-daughter dance and rumour has it my old man has some fancy moves."

"Yeah, come on, old man, show us what you've got," Liz laughed as she pushed Michael towards Hayley.

"What did I do to deserve all this abuse?" he groaned as his wife and daughter laughed merrily at his pain.

The vision faded but their laughter echoed in Michael's ears as he found himself caught in that moment between dreaming and waking where the dream felt horribly real. He could still smell Liz's perfume and feel Hayley's hand on his arm. But then reality set back in like a gloomy, grey cloud drifted over the sun. His apartment was dark and still, lacking any of the warmth or comfort that had been so present in his dream. He was alone once more, a stranger to himself again.

The man in his dream was someone he hadn't been in over three years, a man who smiled and laughed and danced and had a life he was actually excited to live.

He slouched against the bathroom sink, staring in the mirror bleary-eyed and exhausted, the sound of his family's voices fading from his mind and the small details of his dream already forgotten as it so often tended to be with dreams, whether we wanted to forget or not. The figure that he saw in the mirror was a far cry from the man he had been for so very long. There were dark shadows under his eyes, wrinkles that had formed at some point in the past three years and rough stubble lining his once clean-shaven jaw. And the coldness in his eyes didn't even hint at the joy he had once felt at something as simple as spending a long car journey pulling goofy expressions to entertain Hayley when she was bored.

He let out a shaky breath as he stared at his own reflection, completely lost as to who he now was or what his purpose in life was supposed to be. Liz and Hayley's voices and laughter still swirled in his head like music playing somewhere in the distance. He used to be a husband but now his wife was dead. He used to be a father but now he was childless. He used to be somebody but now he didn't even technically exist.

Scrubbing at his face, he took a deep breath and forced the cacophony of emotions back down inside of him, an emotionless expression forming in their place. He had purpose. It wasn't the drive and goals that used to motivate him, to never become his father and to instead be an upstanding citizen who did his family proud. Because he had failed his family just like his own father had failed him. But that young boy, so full of determination to be nothing like his father, had grown into a man who died right there in Yemen alongside his family. The man he was now, that man was somebody else entirely.

Now he would skip breakfast in favour of grabbing coffee on the go rather than having Liz roll her eyes and shove him out of the way as he burnt his third attempt at pancakes. He would spend his day observing a death row inmate to judge her suitability for their programme, not analysing intel obtained from enemy combatants. And everything he would do would be in the hope that one day he would stumble upon something that would allow him to finally get Kasim instead of aiming for something like finally buying that house in Hawaii or getting off work early enough to take his family out for dinner.

That day in Yemen had left his life and self irrevocably changed. Happiness was a distant memory now which he only got to experience in the most vague of ways as he dreamt of those he had lost, and he couldn't help but wonder if the only happiness he would ever feel until the day he died would come from ghosts and mere shadows of things that once were.


End file.
